Laughter Lines: “What if he’s out there watching us right now?” / “Show him your tits.”

Halloween night: A very creepy looking clown torments two young women stuck outside an old warehouse.

Characters who largely don’t make stupid decisions, some awesome camera and FX work, and a genuinely unsettling figure in Art the Clown, all eclipsed by a scene where a young woman is suspended upside down, naked, while he saws her in half from between her legs to her head, which plays out like some incel jerk-off fantasy found on the dark web.

Elsewhere, it’s women cowering, women tied to chairs, women being beaten and shot, while the male victims (albethem greater in number) are almost all killed from behind without even seeing their attacker and always fully clothed.

I thought and hoped we were past this kind of overtly sexualised violence. Without it, this would’ve had an extra star-and-a-half and a much longer review.

Laughter Lines: “Sometimes, when I’m here at work, I just fantasize about being crushed in the gears of a ride.”

Be not fooled by that artwork, this cheapo production is littered with issues that plague low-budget filmmaking, but is at least worth a look at for fans of the early, grainy Friday the 13thinstalments, which appear to have influenced a fair whack of its aesthetic. Spoilers ensue.

The youthful employees at Fright Land work their final shift before the closure of the park for good, due to low ticket sales. They decide to stick around and have a party, which is soon crashed by a pair of masked lunatics who waste no time in hanging, slashing, and deep-frying them one by one. This is one of the few films where the black guy literally does die first.

Obvious final girl Jennifer is concerned about where her missing boyfriend might be, while dragging the dead weight of the wimpy park manager around everywhere she goes, eventually finding out that the park owner (Hellraiser‘s Doug Bradley) has decided to try and turn around their bad fortunes by staging ‘an incident’ that will drag in the crowds.

Mucho dialogue of the “quit screwing around” variety ensues, and the rather dilapidated look of the park pleasantly echoes Camp Crystal Lake’s grubby, rundown cabins. However, there are sound and visual problems throughout, debuting with the frankly bizarre pagination-from-hell title card:

I mean… why???

Scream Park isn’t a good film, but beyond the low-end presentation and amateur-night performances (the survivor is interviewed by a cop, who finishes talking with her by saying “Thanks – take it easy.” Dude, she just saw eight people die!) there’s some fun to be had – and it’s great to finally see someone go for the eyes after years of shouting at the screen for them to do it!

If you can force the ludicrous reason for the madness like a piece of vile birthday cake down your throat, this cheesy little Halloweenwannabe isn’t half bad.

A trio of children born on the same day, during a total eclipse of the sun, are all missing empathic emotions and so embark on a killing spree as they turn ten. The brats-from-hell – Debbie, Steven, and Curtis (the most evil one) – are diagnosed by Lori Lethin’s astrology-loving heroine, Joyce. Joyce, really. Is that the best kick-ass final girl name they could come up with? She and her little brother, Timmy (…of course!) are high value targets due to this knowledge.

Up for the chop are grump teachers, horny teen couples, interfering siblings, and even their own parents who, up to the point where it’s too late, only believe their little darlings are angels from heaven. Regrettably, all three minions are spared the deserved axe in the face, in the hope of a sequel that never came to fruition due to a lack of box office success.

Don’t fall for that sweeter-than-sweet bullshit – they want you DEAD!

Shoddy production values are responsible for most of the damage, leaving the film looking cheap and tacky, as well as gutless for not knocking off at least one of the evil little fuckers.

Until recently, I’d never really considered Candyman to be a slasher flick – it’s frankly too high-end in both production unities and the overt themes of urban decay and the racial politics of a poor community being basically ignored by the surrounding world. But it’s also about a homicidal loon with a gnarly hook that he uses to shred innocent victims with… Beware spoilers.

I clearly remember trailers for Candyman when it came to the cable movie channels in the early 90s – a hooked hand smashing through a bathroom cabinet. “Ah, just another serial killer thriller,” thought 14-year-old me. Or not.

University of Illinois graduate students Helen Lyle and Bernadette Walsh are looking to publish their research on urban legends, with an apparent emphasis on the myth of the Candyman, a Bloody Mary-esque character who appears if you say his name five times in front of the mirror and then turn out the light, gutting you with his hooked hand. “It happened to my roommate’s boyfriend’s buddy’s girlfriend,” says a student they interview.

Helen finds out about a more recent murder in the (until recently real) projects of Cabrini-Green, Chicago, which is attributed by everyone but the cops to Candyman, and convinces a skeptical Bernadette to go and investigate the locus. They dodge gangs and meet Anne-Marie, the neighbour of the murdered woman, who heard her screaming through the walls. Ruthie Jean had called the cops to report somebody was breaking through her walls but they refused to believe her. Helen discovers that the apartments have been built so that fixed bathroom cabinets serve as access to the adjacent dwelling, which is how Ruthie Jean’s killer gained access to her apartment.

On a high from this discovery and the belief that a regular murder has been scapegoated off to the legend, Helen goes into investigation overdrive at the cost of her own safety. She and Bernardette are schooled on the origins of the legend by a pompous professor (who returns for the sequel): Candyman was a talented artist from a relatively affluent background who committed the sin of falling in love with and impregnating a white woman. He was attacked, his painting hand cut off and the wound slathered in honey so that he was stung to death by bees, then his body was burned in a pyre.

A young Cabrini-Green resident, Jake, tells Helen of a boy whose genitals were cut off in a public bathroom in the projects. Helen goes with her camera to the toilets where she is attacked by a gang, led by a man who identifies himself as Candyman. The police believe the gang used Candyman’s name to enhance their credibility and this feeds into Helen’s belief that the legend is just that – until she has a strange encounter with a baritone-voiced, hook-handed man in the parking garage, who isn’t happy she disputes the legend.

Helen wakes up disoriented in Anne-Marie’s bathroom, lying in a pool of blood. She staggers out to find the guard dog decapitated and Anne-Marie hysterical over her missing baby. The two tussle and the cops barge in just as Helen is crouched over the woman, wielding a meat cleaver to defend herself with. Suspected of abducting and killing baby Anthony, Helen secludes herself at home, where she is later attacked by Candyman, who guts Bernadette when she drops by, and frames Helen for the crime, who is then packed off to an asylum.

Candyman certainly doesn’t follow the standard Friday the 13thtemplate of sexy teens being slain by the killer. While the babysitter tale plays like something out of an Elm Streetrip-off, the bulk of the film has a lot more to say than the usual sex=death cliches. As one of very few non-white slashers in an American production, Candyman stands out as being probably the first urban-set horror flick, and could easily have been nothing more than a the usual textbook opus of attractive young people being killed one by one, but thanks to Clive Barker’s story (The Forbidden, originally set in Liverpool), there’s far more depth at play.

The central motif around white people not venturing into Cabrini-Green – seemingly even the cops – has allowed Candyman to sew the seeds of fear throughout the community, reflects the plight of the real neighbourhood, plagued by crime right up until its eventual destruction in 2011, and probably scores of other housing projects across the nation, left to fester. The horror in Candyman is as much from the fears rooted in the reputations of such neighbourhoods as it is the eponymous villain, who doesn’t even appear until halfway through as it is.

Cast member Kasi Lemmons later said it was about taking responsibility for the monsters we create, insofar as the Candyman’s lynching created the demon, but society’s disregard for urban areas and housing projects eventually manifests in areas that the rest of society is afraid of. This is one of very few slasher films where the various levels of text could be written into a hundred different theses exploring the myriad of themes at play. As a piece of entertainment, it is scarier than much of its kin and, miraculously, is yet to suffer the indignity of a remake… but then let’s turn to the sequels, shall we?

The inevitable sequel starts splendidly with pompous writer Phillip Purcel recapping the legend of Candyman, Helen Lyle, and then being dared to test the myth in front of an audience. He’s later assaulted by a young man whose father was possibly killed by Candyman. Purcell then pays for disrespecting the legend in a grimy New Orleans bar restroom. It’s interesting that the opening victim isn’t a nubile young woman for what feels like the first time ever, but a middle-aged British guy. Hey, maybe this won’t suck as hard as everybody says!

Quite why or how Candyman has switched locus from the Chicago ghetto to the Old Quarter of New Orleans is a mystery – maybe he can be summoned anywhere – but we meet idealistic young art teacher Annie, sister of the man who assaulted Purcell as has been duly charged with his murder. Her mother Octavia (the awesome Cartwright), is counting her remaining days after a terminal cancer diagnosis, and her husband Paul just wants to be there for her.

Annie’s students are curious about the Candyman legend and she tries to prove it’s bullshit by saying his name five times into the mirror. Nothing happens – everyone chills. Then he appears later, guts Paul before her eyes, and pretty much says much of the same garb he said to Virginia Madsen last time.

It eventually transpires that Annie is Candyman’s great-great-granddaughter (or great-great-great), and while her father died trying to put an end to the terror by tracking down the hand mirror that his spirit was originally swallowed up by, Octavia has tried to avoid her children discovering the familial connection at all costs.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what Candyman’s endgame was in this one, but it didn’t feel like Annie was really in that much danger. Like Helen, she becomes the prime suspect when various people start to lose their insides, although this time someone finally believes her when CCTV is discovered proving that one idiot who did the name thing is gutted by an invisible foe.

Candyman’s status shifts to a sort of folk hero for this one, which has far less to say on the social divisions – in any subtle way at least – and suffers here and there from evidence budgetary constraints. Todd is still menacing and scary, the grue doesn’t hold much back, and New Orleans always makes for an appealing filmic backdrop. Rowan’s role is limited by its through-the-motions writing, and she doesn’t seem that traumatised by the pretty fucking gory murder of her husband right in front of her.

The biggest issue here is that the film doesn’t move far enough (bar geographically) from the template of the first one, and so feels like a retread.

It’s a sharp decline in quality for the third – and to date final – outing for Daniel Robitaille, as the series is dumbed down to little more than a second-rate Elm Street knock off (even featuring an actor from that movie), with bad FX and some dismal acting, as Baywatch alumnus D’Errico is cast as the grown-up daughter of Kelly Rowan’s character from the last film. Which makes her Candyman great-great-granddaughter. With her blue eyes, blonde hair, and whiter-than-white complexion…

Caroline is an artist, aware of her family history, and is talked into proving the legend is fake by saying his name five times before a mirror at an exhibition of Robitaille’s art work. Where that’s been all this time, nobody bothers to explain. Nor do they explain how he’s back after apparently being destroyed at the end of Farewell to the Flesh. These things are, however, the least of the Candyman 3‘s problems.

The action has moved again, this time to Los Angeles during Day of the Dead, and Latino culture is front and centre, with Nick Corri’s love interest helping her out after the first murders. There’s a scene where his grandmother makes Caroline talk to an egg, which is then broken into a dish. Admittedly, the extreme close-up of a bee crawling out of it is cool.

Instead of various characters being dumb enough to utter the name, Candyman gets his kicks by killing off Caroline’s friends and acquaintances who say they don’t believe the legend: People are skewered again, a naked woman is stung to death by bees, hook in the mouth blah blah blah, and Candyman takes out nine goths who worship him, all the while telling Caroline to be his victim.

Watch out for a cop car scene ripped off from the previous year’s Scream 2, the hilarious dance-shuffle the cop does into the room right at the end, and best of all D’Errico’s little-girl scream when she discovers the first bodies. This was so unbelievably bad I played it a dozen times until I could laugh no more. She also keeps calling Corri’s grandmother ‘A-boiler’ rather than ‘Abuela’.

Tony Todd fortunately got cast in Final Destinationthe following year, but this is a sad, sad end to a tale that started off so rich with contextual depth. Good for a laugh but cheapo sequels don’t come much more embarrassing than this.

Laughter Lines: “There’s always one guy like you who wants to shit in the apple pie. But you just shit in the one apple pie that knows how to shit back.”

Pitch this one halfway between Scary Movieand Behind the Mask. A huge flop at the box office (taking less than it’s production budget worldwide), Club Dread probably just came at the wrong time. Slasher movies being considered the lowest form of horror as it is, parodying them is likely seen as too easy a route to take in comedy as well.

Coconut Pete’s is a Spring Break-type paradise island for hedonistic youth, run by the titular stoner ex-rock star (Paxton, who is awesome), a sort of Ozzy Osbourne by way of the Beach Boys, and a staff made up of the Broken Lizard guys: the DJ, tennis pro, divemaster, ‘Fun Police’, and Lars, the new masseur. There’s also Jenny the aerobics instructor (played by ex-Sweet Valley High twin, Daniel).

We’ve already seen a ménage à trois interrupted by the machete wielding psycho at the start, and festivities of the resort are soon hijacked with more bodies – including the human PacMan maze, Pete’s head of security taking on the killer (see Laughter Lines), and the best gag, a fleeing employee attempting to speed away in a golf cart that the killer out-walks.

The killer instructs the staff to carry on as normal if they want to stay alive, prompting their investigations to occur off the record. Lars and Jenny do most of the footwork, while divemaster Juan avoids the affections of slightly-unhinged guest Penelope (“Peena-loap”), and the group try to work out how the murders relate to Pete’s music of yore.

The film was so limited in its release that I never got to see the theatrical cut, which ran 103 minutes. The unrated DVD version does go on too long and begins to drag as the BL gang milk their own jokes at the expense of giving their characters any depth. The film somewhat bows under the weight of the straight-bloke humor, complemented by requisite nudity, and none of the [few] female characters are written much comedic to do or say.

Why it ultimately failed is anyone’s guess. Something doesn’t work, but it’s not particularly easy to identify what – it just feels like it belongs to another time and place.